Herm Edwards Learns About College Recruiting, Is Amazed

Arizona State’s Herm Edwards experiment may not ultimately prove to be successful. But it’s become abundantly clear that it won’t be boring. Edwards had hit the ground running, providing quote after quote suggesting that he may not have fully appreciated the situation he stepped into.

“I basically came in here and set up a pro model of how we’re going to go about evaluating players. But the evaluation is the key here in college football. It’s not like in pro football. In pro football, it’s interesting because when you win, you draft last but in college football you recruit. You have to go after guys.”

“It’s, I’ll tell you what now, you’re not only recruiting kids, sometimes you’re trying to recruit the parent too. That’s what’s amazing. You have to stay in contact with these kids.”

“I’m calling these kids all the time, making visits, I’m all over the place and you’re asking an 18-year-old kid to come to your university and a lot of these kids have no idea why they’re going to go to your university. They don’t know. They want to be recruited. They want to know how many people are coming to their house, how many head coaches are calling them. It’s an amazing deal.”

A charitable interpretation here is that Edwards, prone to enthusiasm, is just overusing the hyperbolic “amazing.” The other possibility, the one that should alarm Sun Devils fans, is that the concept of college football recruiting has proved to be this shocking. And not the athlete-called press conference or over-the-top commitment videos, but rather the basic nuts and bolts stuff.